Neck in­jury grounds Welsh cap­tain

Cardiff: Wales cap­tain Sam War­bur­ton will not play against Aus­tralia this week­end af­ter in­jur­ing his neck. The flanker has been re­leased back to Cardiff Blues to get game-time un­der his belt af­ter suf­fer­ing a neck in­jury – rul­ing him out of Satur­day’s game against the Wal­la­bies. War­bur­ton has not played since suf­fer­ing a frac­tured cheek­bone against Le­in­ster a month ago. War­bur­ton is now set to fea­ture for the Blues in the PRO12 at Tre­viso on Fri­day and a de­ci­sion on who will cap­tain Wales at the Prin­ci­pal­ity Sta­dium on Satur­day will be made later in the week. Wales hope to have War­bur­ton back for the other re­main­ing games of the au­tumn series against Ar­gentina, Ja­pan and South Africa.

But Justin Tipuric is ex­pected to re­place the Wales skip­per in the back-row to face Aus­tralia and de­fence coach Shaun Ed­wards praised the 43-cap flanker for his cur­rent form with the Ospreys. “Sam is go­ing back to the (Cardiff) Blues to get some game time un­der his belt,” Ed­wards told Reuters. – Planet Rugby